Added Features for Skype for Business

Over the last few months here at P&L we have been busy testing out some of the newest features to be added to Skype for Business. If you were able to make it to our Nology User’s Conference in November, we even had Microsoft on hand to help demo it.

Cloud PBX is Microsoft’s solution for voice in the cloud. It’s been something I have been looking forward to ever since Office 365 was launched. Microsoft has been offering a replacement for the tridiagonal PBX via Lync (which later became Skype for Business) for years, but the requirements were steep and not well suited for the SMB space. It required a number of servers installed on-premises and some specialized knowledge to get up and running and to continue to support. Now, with the offering being available via Office 365, the back-end requirements have become much more manageable for the SMB market.

In our Omaha office, we just recently completed the move from our old PBX system to using Skype for Business Online for our phones. This allowed us to bring together our Instant Messaging, voice, video, meeting, and phone systems into one package and system. The interoperability between Skype for Business and the other Office applications like Outlook, make one click phone calls and meetings so much easier and save a ton of time.

While voice quality is certainly something that we were concerned about when moving to a cloud based solution over the months of testing we did, we found that there are almost no issues when moving to the solution. In fact the dashboards we have on the backend to track poor call statistics shows that in December, of the 20,000 voice calls we had, less than .01% (yes, one, one hundredth of a percent), or about 20 calls, were considered bad as reported by the end users and we are working to resolve even those calls.

Moving to a cloud voice solution isn’t an easy decision, but we are out in front leading the way with testing, deploying and supporting this solution because we believe it brings all the things you expect to work into a easy to use, productive package, and will help businesses who take advantage of it grow and strive in a competitive communications driven world. If you’re not in the phone business, why have a box on the wall you have to deal with?

Our Mission

To be a single source for technology needs of the small to mid-sized company. We will exceed all expectations and be a vital part of the success of our customers.
By doing so, we not only set P&L Technology apart from its competitors, we enable our clients to compete more effectively against their own competition.